soundings #013: Kaffe Matthews – avoiding the algorithm

KHM

live composition made around you journeying with the passages of sharks. from the tiniest detail to the most beautiful din.

40mins

4 channels.

4 subs.

Kaffe Matthews is a pioneering music maker who works live with space, data, things and place to make new electroacoustic compositions worldwide. The physical experience of music for the maker and listener has always been central to her approach and to this end she has also invented some unique interfaces; the sonic armchair, the sonic bed and the sonic bike, that not only enable new approaches to composition but give immediate ways in to unfamiliar sound and musics for wide ranging audience.

Violin, theremin, star maps, NASA scientists, sharks, children, solo walks and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra have all sourced this growing body of works for sites such as concert hall, city street, basement club, gallery, living room, empty shop and the human body.

Kaffe has also established the collectives Music for Bodies (2006) and The Bicrophonic Research Institute (2014) where ideas and techniques are developed within a pool of coders and artists using shared and open source approaches, publishing all outcomes online.